


The Foolish Emperor

by tokyoblackbird



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-02
Updated: 2015-05-13
Packaged: 2018-02-27 19:41:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2704205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tokyoblackbird/pseuds/tokyoblackbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which the conqueror is conquered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The king’s madness came with three merchants, one Chinese, one Indian, and one very pretty.

It was the Spring of the third year of Kurogane Khagan’s reign and the sheep rolled about the grasslands, ripe with wool. There was peace, as much as peace could be had in the Empire of the Great Khan.

Young men sparred; older men repaired saddles, eager for the warhorn. No one feared because in those three years, the young Khagan had yet to lose a battle. Fighting under the handsome, fierce warlord had become a great source of pride--and plunder.

That Spring, a tedious peace persisted. The country thrummed with restlessness and skirmishes broke out at the borders.

The three merchants sought an audience over a tax dispute. Kurogane received them on his gold throne; he had seen already thirty people that day, three hundred that week. A small group of guards and advisors looked on, asleep in their boots.

“Oh great Khagan--” began the Indian merchant.

“Kurogane--” Kurogane corrected.

“Kurogane, maharaja, my lord, we have journeyed from Kashgar bearing carpets from Sarmarkand and grape wine from Acre--”

“The corrupt official at Lanzou has been replaced.” Kurogane motioned for a bag of silver to be delivered to the Indian. “Accept this as repayment for your trouble.”

“We are most grateful, Kurogane, Great One.” Bowing, the merchants began to retreat.

“But.”

The Indian froze mid-bow.

Yes, it was unmistakable. There was a twitch to the Khagan’s dark brow. An ominous twitch.

“Great Khagan?” 

“I wish to learn English,” said Kurogane.

“English?”

“Yes. I want your companion to teach me English.”

The Indian looked to the Chinese man. They both looked to the third merchant, fair and blue-eyed, who blinked perplexedly.

“He is...Italian, my lord.”

A tiny drop of sweat beaded on Kurogane’s furrowed brow.

“I suddenly desire to learn Italian,” he said hastily. “It really is very beautiful. The language.” He cleared his throat. “I have always thought so.” The guards and advisors snapped awake.

Kurogane was not exactly a scholar. As a child, he was always escaping his tutors to ramble through the forests with his bow and his warhorse.

They followed his gaze.

The third merchant was fair and slight, dressed in the loose tunic and trousers of a sailor. A scrap of blue ribbon tied back his fair hair. Pink lips curved in a pretty, apologetic smile.

For the first time, he spoke, his eyes downcast. “I have voyaged all my life,” he said. “My Italian is not what it used to be.”

“Nevertheless,” Kurogane said. “I have need of it.”

“Oh?”

Now the merchant affixed his bright gaze on the king.

“Well if you have need of me,” he said quietly, “How can I resist?”

A honey-slow smile.

Kurogane rose to his feet like a sleepwalker.

“I must see to my studies,” he said. “At once!”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historically inspired, but absolutely not historically accurate.


	2. Chapter 2

Kurogane walked quickly, out of habit, but Fai fell easily in step. He followed Kurogane to his private gardens. 

At this proximity, Fai realized Kurogane was younger than he had initially guessed; in fact, Fai was probably several years older. But Kurogane's hands were already hard and rough. A long scar peeked from the sleeve of his regalia. Fai noticed these things.

Springtime in Karakoum saw tender leaves unfurling on the oleander, but no blossoms yet. The Mongolian wind, a restless constant, wrinkled the pond laid out before them. Neither wind nor chill would soften until summer, but the cold soothed, and was not unpleasant. Every statue, every lily and stone, every ripple, seemed to be arranged to trap the eye along meandering lines, from juniper branch, to the curve of gazebo roof, to the back of a turtle rising to breathe. 

A garden of wandering contemplation. That was the first surprise.

Fai never thought a warlord would dwell in a place like Tumen Amgalan, the Palace of Myriad Peace. 

Kurogane led Fai to a gazebo midway along a stone bridge. He rested his elbows upon the banister. 

They stood in silence, Kurogane looking intently at Fai, Fai looking into the jade green water.

"You're not a merchant," said Kurogane.

"You're pretty clever."

"You're a courtesan. You've been wearing that empty smile ever since I saw you."

Fai hid the offending smile behind a coy hand.  

"Whose court do you belong to? What did you do to deserve exile?"

"Courtesan? You flatter me--"

"No games."

Fai paused to think. Before him was a man whose armies had slaughtered hundreds of thousands in less than a decade. Thousands had died personally to his sword. Fai himself had seen the aftermath of the Battle of Kalka River, with Ashura, as they surveyed their kingdom's outskirts. The green plains were spiked with arrows, trampled by horses, and muddy with blood. Heads of men and women alike were stacked in haphazard piles.

The faces of the dead had begun to melt under the sun. They found the lord of the municipality hanging from his tower window.

He had committed suicide rather than face the horde.

Fai didn't mind dying, but he wouldn't take Souma and Watanuki with him. 

"I belong to King Ashura's court in the North," he admitted.

"The Mad Czar? No wonder you wanted to leave. But you're Italian."

"I was adopted."

"Consort?"

"No," said Fai, evenly, blandly. "Magician." 

Kurogane considered these things. "I find you...very beautiful," he said. 

 _So it begins_ , thought Fai bitterly. 

"I can give you whatever you want." Kurogane took Fai's hand. "My empire is the largest in the world. Luxuries from Nanjing in the east to Alexandria in the west, anything. I want you among my court."

"When a king commands, what option do I have?" 

Kurogane let go of Fai's hand and stepped back. The second surprise. "I'm not commanding you." 

"If I said no?" pressed Fai. 

"I'd let you go. I'm not in the business of--" he paused. 

"What?"

"--taking hostages," finished Kurogane. And laughed uncomfortably. 

The Great Khagan certainly was not. He measured against the linchpin; he welcomed defectors, but mostly he killed.

However, he was quite polite for a mass-murderer. (Fai had known a few.)

The koi were jumping. Kurogane extracted a squashed rice ball, wrapped in lotus leaf, from his sleeve and, to Fai's bemusement, began to feed the fish. He offered it to Fai.

Fai pinched off some rice and crumbled it in his fingers. "How large is your army?" 

"Eight-hundred thousand."

The fish gulped and thrashed.

"Wherever I go, Ashura will follow, with his army."

Kurogane seemed amused. "Alright."

"He also is a magician."

"That's fine."

Fai smiled. "I'll stay with you," he said. Truth told, he was getting tired.


	3. Chapter 3

The Great Khagan had begun to act strangely.

He had taken to picking flowers amongst the grazing livestock, to the neglect of his archery practice. None of the leaders of his tumen were able to hold his attention, and that was when they could find him. The Great Khagan spent an inordinate amount of time in the Italian tutor’s room.

“He certainly enjoys the language,” remarked a royal shepherdess, watching Kurogane wander away with a bouquet of white and purple anemones.

“It’s spring,” groused old Qara Changha’an, Kurogane’s second in command. He gazed morosely at the northern mountains, a faint blue smudge in the distance, and hoped his nephew would come to his senses soon.

Kurogane had given Fai a ger across the little stone bridge from his own. Fai requested some worn white furs, to be brought from his caravan. Kurogane provided an elaborately patterned green bed and a grand red lacquered desk, carved with swifts and chrysanthemums. Fai thought the red, white, and green furniture gave his room a funny Yuletide feel in the steadily dampening Springtime.

“Do you have those flowers imprinted on your back?” Fai murmured that evening. 

“What?”

Fai was writing yet another letter, to his sole confidant in Rus, Lady Chii. He could not shake the previous evening’s nightmare; Ashura had found and imprisoned the children, in an attempt to extract his location. The children of course had no idea where he was, but Ashura was relentless, obsessive....

“You’ve been sitting there for two hours,” said Fai.

Kurogane had indeed taken up his usual spot at Fai’s feet, leaning half-asleep against the mahogany desk. He stretched and rubbed his back.  “I don’t know. Wanna check?” He grinned.

Fai laughed. “Not really.”

 _I have found a solution,_ Fai wrote, _a refuge_. _I will find a way to bring you all here. Even Ashura wouldn’t dare cross the Khagan._ He chewed the end of his reed pen. His words felt empty and did little to quell his anxiety. _I will have it arranged. Until then, stay safe._

“Would you like a courtier for your letter?”

“I’ll leave it with a merchant. Less suspicious.”

Kurogane, out of ignorance of Lady Chii’s situation, did not offer any further assistance, and Fai did not dare ask. His life, and the lives of Souma and Watanuki, were at the mercy of Kurogane's whims. 

Kurogane pinched Fai's little toe. “Hey,” he said. “Sit with me.”

Fai obediently got out of the chair, and Kurogane pulled him down onto his lap. Kurogane kissed Fai's cheek and buried his face in Fai’s hair. His breath tickled.

As usual, for Fai, it was a struggle to relax. Kurogane pressed another kiss, to Fai’s neck, and Fai shivered. He didn't want to be in love again. He was tired of the whole thing. He just wanted everyone to be safe...and for himself, it would be nice to sleep for maybe a thousand years. Kurogane had one hand on Fai’s hip and the other in his hair and he pressed a third kiss, to the corner of Fai’s lips.

He met Fai’s eyes, and waited to be turned away again.

Fai had his arms wrapped around Kurogane's shoulders, to steady himself. He didn't know what to do. He was not in the business of seducing kings. He had no idea how to go about this kind of thing.

_Can I just say, I’ll trade a kiss for safe passage for Chii, Sakura, and Syaoran? I’ll trade complete obedience for a safe place for them to stay?_

_But what can I give to stay safe here forever?_

Was there a safe? Was there a forever? 

When this new savage king was bored with Fai, what then?

Fai shivered again.

What would happen to everybody then?

To his horror, Fai felt a slow tightening in his throat.

“Fai?”

 He put on a big smile, but a traitorous tear slid down his cheek to Kurogane's thumb. _  
_

"What's wrong?"

"Absolutely nothing, Kuro--" The smile had become a grimace, it hurt and probably looked terrible. He bowed his head and let his hair fall across his face.  _  
_

Kurogane waited.

"I'm afraid for my friends in Rus...." He struggled to phrase his request. "Is there any way--could you please--"

"I'll send my twenty most skilled men as a discreet guard. I'll move three mingghan to sack Tabriz." 

Mobilizing three thousand men. Just like that.

Kurogane's war strategizing face was eerily beatific. "They've been getting restless cooling their heels in Nishapur anyway. I bet they've already got the conquest planned; Subutai's a good man." Fai wondered what Kurogane saw when he said these things, if not the crushed bodies of hundreds of young men. " _That'll_ distract the Czar."

Kurogane smoothed Fai's hair behind his ear. "Is that good?" He was not one for pet names, but still he added, with incongruous gentleness, "My love?"

Fai politely kissed Kurogane on the mouth in reply.

Kurogane's hand slipped behind Fai's head and he returned the kiss, greedily. His fingers dug into Fai's hair. He tasted of bitter tea.  

Eventually, they broke apart. 

"You didn't have to."

Fai said nothing. He rubbed at his eyes.  

Kurogane shook his head. "You don't get it." He picked Fai up and carried him to bed. 

Fai had to admit, he really didn't. But he kissed Kurogane good night all the same. It seemed Kurogane was going to linger a while longer, but he did not.

So Fai listened to Kurogane's footsteps on the little white bridge. 


	4. Chapter 4

It was getting boring. Every night since Fai had fled the Winter Palace, always, the same dream. Ashura’s doing, undoubtedly, and Fai wondered at the clockwork of Ashura’s mind. Had he always been so obsessive?

Or was this a symptom of the curse?

Every night, Fai was nine years old again, a beggar in the lakeside village Siviano. Even if Ashura did not insist on returning Fai to that day, Fai would never forget it, although it began normally enough.

It was late August, and Fai was crawling through a bean field, a couple yards from the shore of the Lago d’Isola. It had recently rained, and he was crusted in mud. He had also smeared mud through his bright hair. He was picking unripe peas as he moved along, a couple from each plant, and shoving them unceremoniously in his mouth.

He envied the beggars and their bread on the steps of the cathedral.  But he knew that Father Capello would look through him, as though Fai were a patch of air. The other beggars, less well-mannered, would turn and spit.

It was not unusual that every villager knew Fai, for there were only forty or so families, a little over a two hundred people, mostly farmers, some fishermen.

It was however unusual that every villager ignored him.

Unlike the other beggars, Fai was neither a commoner, nor an orphan. He was the son of laughing Lady Auciello, the wife of the village Lord.

There was a ballad written about her, how the Lord had found her in an olive tree, like a little bird, and had wooed her down.

And after he married her, she advocated for her people, her kindness manifesting in practical gifts: a new well, alms to the poor, a resident medic from France.

And she was incredibly beautiful, slight with a veil of brunette curls like the Virgin Mary. Soft-spoken, but confident, and quick to smile. (Fai had inherited her smile.)

And when the Lord and Lady toured the village, they still blushed and held hands like smitten youth, which made the villagers smile and love them more.

She died giving birth to twins.

It was incredibly strange.

During her funeral, whispers. Very strange. One twin was dark haired and dark eyed like their parents, like everyone in the village. The other was blue-eyed and fair, like a mercenary English knight they had housed a summer past…

But that was inconceivable.

Fai’s brother now lived in the castle. And Fai...It was like he did not exist.

The low moan of a horn made Fai jump. Abruptly, there were yells from the villagers in the neighboring field and thumps as some abandoned their sickles. Still others carried theirs, as they ran towards the shore.

Hesitantly, Fai stood up and looked around.

He expected (absurdly) a grand ship to have pulled ashore. Instead, there was just a rather tall man stepping out of a rowboat.

He was far too pale to be Italian. His black eyes had a catlike slant. He wore a long white cloak that dragged along the ground, but remained mysteriously pristine.

The man said a few quiet words to the villagers, who stepped back. And then the man began to walk, through the mud, through the bean field, towards Fai.

“They treat you poorly,” the man said. 

It had been so long since someone had looked Fai in the eye. He began to cry.

At last he was rescued. He was convinced.

Gaunt and filthy and starving, 9-year-old Fai gazed up adoringly from his knees like a stray dog.

Fai knew this was Ashura’s memory of him.

He hated it.

The dream was changing. 

 


	5. Chapter 5

Souma and Watanuki were seated cross-legged in their tent. Kurogane poured out one final round, emptying out the large jug of airag. It was not strong enough to get them drunk, but it warmed the atmosphere somewhat. Also it made Watanuki really need to pee.

It was closer to dawn than midnight, and Fai was surely asleep. Souma yawned hugely.

“Excuse me, my lord,” she said, “May I go with your men to rescue Lady Chii and the children? They know me, and I may be useful in other ways. There are places women can go that men cannot.”

“What about me?” said Watanuki.

“If it please my lord,” said Souma, “may Watanuki protect--that is, stay with Fai?”

“I understand you have been trained in the martial arts, Souma.”

“Yes, my Lord, in Japan.”

“You may.” Kurogane knocked back his drink, and absent-mindedly tried to pour another.

Watanuki offered his own cup.

“Thanks.”

Watanuki shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He wished the Khagan would get to the point. Kurogane had been there all night, drinking in semi-silence, punctuated by abrupt interrogations about their travels, intense strategizing about the conquest of Eastern Europe, and sly questions about Fai, what he liked, what he wanted.

Kurogane downed Watanuki’s airag as well, and then gazed into the emptied dish, intensely. “Do you think he--

"Never mind." He looked even fiercer when embarrassed. He left.

“Unbelievable,” said Watanuki. His legs had gone numb.

* * *

  
Kurogane was hardly out of Souma and Watanuki’s tent when he ran into Qara Changha'an. In the darkness, the man's expression was hidden, and Kurogane did not question why he was up so late. “Uncle, I need three thousand men to Tabriz and twenty of my special forces--”

“Nishapur is fallen.”

The red edge of sunrise glimmered just beyond the rooftops. 

“How?”

“King Ashura.”

“That’s--”

“Unprecedented. There were rumors, but Subutai dismissed them. The Rus have kept to their borders for centuries; there was no reason why-- _almost_ no reason…”

“Casualties?” said Kurogane flatly.

“Four minghan. The majority of Nishapur. Subutai also...is dead.”

If Qara expected a reaction from Kurogane, he saw none. Internally, though, Kurogane felt blood rushing to his extremities, lead-heavy, leaving only alcohol lurching in his guts. “Impossible.”

“The messengers say his men move unnaturally, as if of one mind, oblivious to pain.”

“ _My_ men are of one mind.”

“His horde descended like a night chill; too quickly for counterattack. They spared no one. Not even the children. The spirits of the neighboring city are all broken. The roads are choked with refugees--”

“ _My men_ \--”

“Have met their match, or worse.”

“In the Loony Czar?” Kurogane barked out a laugh. “He is an inbred imbecile. He is senile. He has the mind of a child. He is _nothing_ next to me.”

Qara seized Kurogane by the shoulders. Despite the thirty-year age difference, Qara remained tall and broad shouldered like a young man, with a neck thick like a bull’s. The family resemblance was clearest in the eyes; sharp edged and ferocious, never relaxed. His grip was hard, his jaw clenched.

“Turn him over.”

Kurogane shoved his uncle. “I will not.”

“Fool. Is your kingdom worth a runaway whore?”

If it were any other man, Kurogane would have killed him. One punch to the head and he'd drop. A hard kick in the gut and he'd stay down. He'd done it before. 

As it were, there was a long pause before he said, "Fifty minghan and twenty men."

"What?"

"Fifty mingghan to Maragha. Twenty of my special forces to Rus. I will meet Ashura personally in Samarkand with another fifty thousand men, if he makes it that far." 

"Cool your head!" 

"I'll have my whores _and_ my kingdom," spat Kurogane. "He is nothing next to me."

He pushed past his uncle and staggered towards the stables. By then, sunrise.


	6. Chapter 6

Now they were at King Ashura’s funeral. Fai made a small sound of annoyance in his sleep. He knew what was coming.

Eleven years after Fai was rescued, Ashura died. He chose to die in the Spring. It was like him.

It was a sunny day in May. A crowd of fifty or so high-ranked nobility gathered within the gates of the royal estate, dressed in long cloaks that pinned at the shoulder and shrouded their bodies. A few among them sported new fabrics, velvet and silk; they were a patchwork of blacks, shimmering and matte. They seemed like specters.

They did not know Ashura well. Ashura did not live in Kiev, finding the climate too capricious and particularly, too humid, thanks to the collective exhalations of all the lakes and ponds and rivers that punctured the city and made it flimsy (Ashura had once said at breakfast) like cheese. (Fai had laughed.) 

But Kiev was the capital, so his body was preserved and loaded into the carriage he traveled in when alive, and all along the road, peasants ceased their labor to pay their respects.

No one in Kiev had known Ashura well. No one really knew Ashura well. Yet everyone wept as if they had lost a friend.

Fai had not questioned this at the time.

Hired mourners, beggar women and children found along the road, preceded the carriage. Their chants grew tinny as the procession entered the gates and wound along the scrubby hillside, the blue castle growing smaller behind them.

The hills before them were bulging with the noble dead. For three hundred years, Ashura’s ancestors had been buried in these hills, in raised earth tombs called kurgans. At last the procession reached the place where Ashura’s kurgan would be built.

The area, large enough to enclose a cathedral, was already surrounded by a low wall of limestone babas.

The babas stood shoulder to shoulder, their crude faces blank. But there was a gap between the guardians through which the servants led the procession to the pyre in the center of the field.

Fai was at the very head of the procession, carrying an ordinary splinter torch which sputtered with ordinary fire, as Ashura had requested.

The pyre was draped in dark blue linen. The servants removed Ashura’s corpse from its box and laid him on it. The King was very tall, and the pyre was almost as tall as he, so raising the body was difficult. His long black hair spilled over the edge. Fai was happy he could not see Ashura's face.

The high priest gave a long eulogy. Fai heard none of it. He stared resolutely at the relaxed curl of Ashura’s fingers.

When it came Fai’s turn to approach, his gait was steady, his expression dignified, as befit a prince. He knelt to touch the torch to the far edge of the linen. The fire caught immediately, vivid yellow, with very little smoke.

And Fai could not look away. The fire dribbled into the kindling and blossomed. It lapped at Ashura's hand, staining skin black, and knotted the silk length of hair. Even though Fai knew it was a lie, he screamed.

The nobles and the servants startled, and then rushed forward, dragging him away from the flames and restraining him.

“My king…” he kept babbling, even though he had no reason to. And then to the people around him, “Please excuse me.” They murmured in sympathy. Specters.

When Fai returned to the palace in Kiev, he found Ashura as he’d known he would, reading peacefully in the private library, alive.

Ashura looked up from _The Canon of Medicine_ and furrowed his brow. “Are you alright?”

Fai was twenty-one years old. He removed the book from Ashura's hand and set it on the side table.   
  
"I realized something today."

Ashura was all stately concern. "What did you realize?"

"I realized I couldn't live without you."

Ashura smiled. "I'll always be with you."

"No. That's not what I meant."

In the morning, Ashura would take on the role of the deceased King Ashura's son, the true prince, returned for the throne. The grandmothers and grandfathers of Rus had seen this before, the artificial death and the polite rebirth, a ritual, as if paying respects to god or nature. They never questioned it.

Fai had only ever seen it once, though.

Fai stooped and kissed Ashura. He ran his tongue along Ashura's lips. He tried to put all his love into a kiss. The way he had felt at the pyre.

He was clumsy. He had never kissed anyone before.

Ashura held perfectly still. 

And then he gently pushed Fai away, perplexed. 

"The way a wife loves a husband--Ashura, I'm in love with you."

Ashura brought his hand to his mouth and examined the spit glistening on his fingers. He was usually so pristine; he seemed defiled, though it had only been a kiss.

"Marry me," said Fai. "Please." 

And he was nine years old again, on his knees, and smeared in mud.

Ashura never laughed. Fai had never once heard him laugh. But in the dream, it was as if Ashura laughed, and the sound was a quiet violence. 

Fai woke up.

Ashura had said yes, Fai remembered. 


	7. Chapter 7

The perfect circle of white light streaming in from the rooftop of Fai's ger indicated noon. He lay in bed for a while, falling in and out of sleep, growing woozy with oversleep. He had little motivation to get up. It was true he had abandoned the man he had claimed to love, the man he had vowed to stay with until death. He had also abandoned his friends from the palace, the servant children Syaoran and Sakura, his loyal maid, Chii.

They would be safer away from him, he had rationalized. But now that seemed like a cheap excuse to abandon one more overwhelming responsibility. 

"I'm the worst." 

It was relaxing to say. 

A shadow flitted through the light, almost blotting it out completely. Then another, and another. Something struck Fai as strange, but he could not put his finger on it, until he heard a crow caw. 

It was terribly quiet in the Palace of Myriad Peace. 

He got up and peered outside the doorway of his tent. 

It wasn't noon at all. That was a lie. It was midnight, but the garden was illuminated with an unnatural light. 

Ashura stood at the gazebo, dressed in white. 

Scattered around him, bodies. Draped on the bridge banister, floating in the lake. Blood streaked the walls and stone paths as if laid down by an enormous brush. Blood dripped from Ashura's hands.

Fai desperately hunted for Souma and Watanuki among the dead, but he recognized no one. 

"Are you doing well, Fai?"

Outside of dreams, it had been so long since Fai had heard Ashura's voice. He shivered.

He realized he had missed the calm patience of it. He had missed it. 

"Yeah, I'm alright."

"Do you miss me?" The familiar look of concern.

Fai smiled. "No."

The scene suddenly _twisted_ , with Ashura in the epicenter. Ashura's body was crushed in the force, and he fell forward, in two pieces. That's when Fai realized he was still dreaming.

They were in Ashura's room on their wedding night and Fai was batting his eyelashes. "Deflower me, my prince!"

Ashura picked Fai up and swung him around, sat him on the bed. He untied Fai's hair as Fai eagerly set to unbuckling Ashura's belt. 

"Should I undress?" teased Fai.

"Absolutely not," Ashura replied, smiling. "I couldn't possibly wait that long."

The ceremony had been quiet. Neither Fai nor Ashura had family, so the usual raucous feasting and the shared rituals were compressed to long hours of quiet together. For three days, according to tradition, the bride was not to speak to the groom, nor show her face. Each night, after the servants prepared the marriage bed, Ashura would lie awake and watch with amusement as Fai, swaddled and veiled, shook with the effort of staying silent and chaste and still.

Now that Fai was finally free, nothing could shut him up. 

"Doesn't my prince want to see my body, while he fucks me?"

Ashura hesitated. 

Fai fell back in bed and stretched. He still wore the red and gold sarafan dress customary of noble brides. His skin was so pale, the maids had not painted it. They had only added kisses of red to his cheeks. He looked as if he had just come in from the cold. Gold chains glittered in his long hair. Gold earrings glittered in his ears.

"Or does my king want to take me quickly, against the wall?" Fai sat up and hooked a finger in the neckline of his dress. "Command me. I live to serve."

"Quickly, yes," Ashura said. "I can't wait another second." A kiss. "My bride is like the winter moon--"

"Big and hard--" joked Fai. 

Ashura struggled out of his pants, clumsy with haste. Fai giggled.

Ashura kissed Fai, scraping his teeth against Fai's neck.

"My love is like the morning sun--" 

" _Rising_. Take off your tunic. I've always wanted to see you."

Ashura obliged and pushed Fai down onto the bed. "My bride is the most handsome man in all of Rus. When he says my name, I--"

"Ashura!" Fai grinned. "Ashura," he sang.

Ashura forced up Fai's skirts. He knelt between Fai's open legs. 

"Hmm. Yes. Yes, yes."

"Very good," responded Ashura with mock seriousness, with his mouth full. (Fai laughed.) "And if I do this?" He pressed a finger inside. 

Fai's thighs trembled. His toes curled. 

"Interesting." 

"No, stop! Husband, come to bed. It's too cold without you."

Ashura obliged and Fai pulled the sheet over the both of them. 

They stared at each other, smiling like fools. 

Fai remembered two days ago, at Church, when he sat at Ashura's feet, his forehead pressed against the ground by Ashura's shoes, swearing loyalty and obedience.

He pulled Ashura closer.

Fai remembered the ringing of coins tossed before them. The cheers of the citizenry. 

He placed a little kiss on the tip of Ashura's nose.

"My love," murmured Ashura, his hand on Fai's hip. "Is like an--angel."

There was sweat soaking in Ashura's hair. His normally cool skin was flushed pink, and glistening with sweat. Fai was on his lips. Fai kissed him just to taste it. 

Pristine, dignified Ashura was grinding his hips against Fai's, making quiet animal begging noises, lips parted, begging for another kiss. Fai rolled over. Ashura's penis, engorged and obscene, rubbed stickily against the flesh between Fai's thighs, and Ashura grunted low in his throat with each movement, like any other animal. 

("I've never done this before," Ashura confessed later. "I never anticipated those Indus Valley books would be so useful.")

"The fallen angel is you," said Fai.

Ashura suddenly pulled Fai hard against him. Fai felt the shudder of pleasure pass through his own body.

Fai reached under the covers, under his skirt, to touch the stickiness between his legs. Ashura pressed slow kisses to the back of his neck. 

The scene changed again.

They were in Fai's ger, lying side by side on Fai's bed. It seemed like noon.

Ashura turned his head. 

"Don't you miss me?"

Fai couldn't look at him. 

Ashura grabbed Fai's shoulder and shook him. "Answer me." It was so unlike him to seize, to use force of any kind.

Fai could only think how much he missed Ashura's stupid poetry and his smiles and his fingers even as they dug into Fai's shoulder like teeth. 

"Fai. Fai."

It wasn't Ashura. Fai blinked, blurry-eyed. It was Watanuki. 

Watanuki was shaking Fai awake. 

"W-what's wrong?"

"You've been asleep two days. I thought you'd never wake up."

"I'm sorry...." Something struck Fai as strange, but he couldn't believe it. "Isn't it too quiet?"

"Yes. The Khagan left with fifty thousand men, two days ago."


End file.
